What
is the purpose of this site? If I wanted to be pretentious, I could
describe it as a gallery of my guitar collection on display to allow
global appreciation of such things, but actually it's more like
one of those sad sites where people put up pictures of their cats,
describe how many children they have in their family and the last
time they had their nose hair trimmed.

A
bit of boring background - I grew up in Christchurch, NZ but now
live in Wellington. I left NZ in 1990 to get a bit of OE and try
and make some money. I returned 11 years and 20 guitars later having
worked in the UK, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, Poland,
Sweden, Vietnam and spending reasonable amounts of time in eastern
Europe and the US. I work as a Retail Banking Solutions Architect.

Since
I have started collecting guitars the one thing I have noticed is
the lack of availability. Supposedly 8-10% of people are left handed
but you won't find anything like that proportion of left handed
guitars manufactured. The number of these guitars I have had to
custom order gives a strong indication of the lack of quality left
handed guitars readily available for retail purchase. Most guitar
shops will stock a token left or two - Japanese strats or copies
being the most common. It's not surprising that a large number of
natural left-handers decide to play right handed.

Having
said that, most major guitar manufactures do make some of their
models available left-handed - Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, Rickenbacker,
PRS (albeit after some time). So why can't you find them? Retailers
not wanting slow moving stock seems to be the most obvious answer
but who wants to wait 6 months to a year for their guitar to be
manufactured? That's enough whining, but if anyone from Parker is
out there, it's about time you came to the party.

I
would love to hear from anyone who has an interest in guitar collecting,
left handed guitars or wants to complain about Swedes. Please note
that none of these guitars are for sale so don't bother sending
price enquiries. Enjoy the site.

Thomas
B. PerryFebruary
2002

"She
Gave Me Water"

This
is a quote from the non-Disney 'Hunchback of Notre Dame' movies
and is uttered by Laughton, Quinn or Hopkins (depending on which
particular movie you are going with) after Esmerelda gives him a
drink. Quasimodo was strapped to a wheel at the time. The book is
more of a narrative and doesn't actually quote Mr Modo as uttering
this statement directly.

What's
that got to do with guitars? Absolutely nothing and there is no
evidence that Quasimodo was left handed, however I liked the quote
so much that I decided to use it. If you want to practice saying
it yourself be sure to hold your mouth as if you have just had an
injection at the dentist, dragging one foot behind you and slumping
over will enhance the effect.